10 Greatest Successes Of WWE Developmental

The superstars with the MADE IN STAMFORD stamp on their rear ends.

By Jack Morrell / May 29, 2015

World Wrestling Entertainment (the World Wrestling Federation before 2002), has operated farm systems, or developmental programmes with various local wrestling promotions for decades. For a long time, Memphis was the first port of call. United States Wrestling Association, Memphis Power Pro Wrestling and Memphis Championship Wrestling all took their turn in providing new stars to the WWF: notably The Rock, who trained and performed as Flex Kavana for USWA long before debuting as Rocky Maivia, and one Bryan Danielson, whose first developmental deal with the company was with the WWF rather than the WWE, in 2000 at MCW. From 1999 to 2008, OVW was the place people most associated with the WWF/WWE. For the first six years, the place was run by Jim Cornette, a fiercely intelligent traditionalist, and once Cornette was ousted, Paul Heyman, an equally clued-up innovator. Heartland Wrestling Association and Deep South Wrestling acted as secondary developmental areas for a little while (the latter being closed down by WWE when they visited and saw, to their horror, exactly how low rent and skuzzy the promotion was), but OVW was the biggest and best. Florida Championship Wrestling replaced DSW in 2007 as the WWEs second port of call, and became the only developmental game in town when the company severed ties with OVW in 2008. In 2012, FCW was rebranded to become the new NXT after the worked talent contest under that name was retired, and with a new focus on developing new talent, WWE would open the Performance Centre at Full Sail University in Florida in July 2013. NXT hasnt looked back since. While many, many past and present WWE superstars have trained in one or more of the companys developmental leagues, most had a degree of professional wrestling experience before their arrival. This article is dedicated to the huge WWF/WWE superstars that the company built from scratch: the greatest successes of the WWE developmental system.

Honourable Mention: John Cena

While everyone thinks of The Face That Runs The Place as the quintessential WWE product a man that lives and breathes the WWE brand and style to the extent that you cant imagine him doing anything else anywhere else John Cena actually worked for Ultimate Pro Wrestling in Los Angeles for two years or so, receiving four tryouts with WWE before signing a developmental deal and heading off to OVW. He would take the character hed run with in UPW, the Prototype, with him to the next level of his training. Owner/operator Rick Bassmans UPW has a reputation as one of WWEs developmental programmes, but was never a genuine farm system. That being said, his Ultimate University training school produced Samoa Joe (who feuded with Cena in UPW back in the day), and UPW was capable of putting on some high quality shows, aping the WWEs production values as closely as possible on an independent budget.